Scenes From A Mall
by Allison Lane
Summary: A series of vignettes showcasing life at the Crossroads Mall.
1. Don't Think Of Yesterday

Scenes From A Mall: Don't Think of Yesterday

By Allison E. Lane

"You awake?"

Metropolis was dark and, for the most part, quiet. Luda's sobs had long since dwindled away to silence, and the corner of the store where she was sharing the lone king-sized bed with Andre was still. Ana had curled up on a nearby bedding display, and at the foot of her miniaturized bed Michael had positioned a regular mattress, as if part of him still wanted to cling to the old belief of safety in numbers. Kenneth alone seemed comfortable with being apart from the group; he had taken up a post in a wingback chair at the front of the store, his shotgun propped across his lap. The faint drone of the security guards' television was almost enough to drown out the inhuman cries of the hellish mob gathering outside the mall.

Almost.

It was several moments before Michael replied. "Yeah."

Ana had been staring aimlessly into space, and had only spoken in the hopes that mindless small talk would distract her from the animal growling filtering through the outer doors, but something about the sound of Michael's voice made her lift her head in concern. "Are you okay?"

In the darkness beyond her feet, she heard Michael shifting on the mattress. "Um," he murmured. "I think I wrenched my back. In the sporting goods store."

She remembered hearing the horrible noises of struggle coming from Reflex Sports and how they had nearly frozen her in fear, how Michael had practically staggered out to rejoin the group, the rasp of pain in his voice as he yelled for everyone to run to the elevators. In all the following excitement and the more immediate necessity of sewing up Kenneth's arm, she had forgotten. Ana automatically slipped into nurse mode. It was what she knew most about, what she was best at. Going through the familiar motions with Kenneth had helped to lessen the dread that the entire world was going insane… maybe it would help again. Take her mind off everything she had seen and witnessed.

"Let me see," she whispered, sitting up and pushing herself off the edge of the bed, adopting the clinical tone she used with her patients at the hospital. Michael hauled himself into a sitting position and put out a hand to make sure she didn't trip or accidentally sit on him. "Lift up your shirt a bit," she instructed, settling down behind him. "Where does it hurt?"

Michael awkwardly indicated the offending area. Ana began to poke and prod as gently as she dared, running through a mental checklist in her head: _latissimus dorsi, teres major and minor, infraspinatus… vertebrae and ribcage…_ He hissed softly when she touched a particularly sore spot, and Ana sat back to reconsider. _No torn or separated muscles, can't entirely rule out cracked ribs without an x-ray…_

"I think you'll live," she said finally, patting Michael's back lightly to let him know he could pull his shirt back down and returning to her perch on the bed. "I can't know for sure without an x-ray, but I don't think you have any cracked ribs. No torn or separated muscles. It looks to me like you just pulled the muscles in your upper right back. If those stupid bastards hadn't locked us in, I'm sure we could find you some aspirin, but… just take it easy for a few days and you should be fine." Ana was all too aware of how ineffectually lame her words sounded, even as she felt her professional façade slipping away. Take it easy for a few days? After what they'd all just been through? It was more likely that none of them would ever get a chance to relax again. "Can… I ask what happened… in there?"

Michael laughed quietly, depreciatingly. In the gloom Ana could just barely see him running a hand through his already disarrayed hair. "I opened a door on one of those—things. It jumped me and pushed me over a counter. We landed kind of hard."

He didn't elaborate further. Ana drew her knees up under her chin and plucked at the hem of her pajama pants, waiting for… what? She didn't know. After a long moment of silence, Michael stretched back out on the mattress and blew out a long, low sigh.

"You were lucky," Ana said quietly, after several minutes of listening to the beating of her own heart. She didn't want to think, but could only imagine, of what Michael had faced there in the sports store. A brief image of a small, snarling face rushing at her flashed across her vision, and she pressed her eyes tightly into her knees. Anything to escape that memory.

Michael chuckled again. "Was I?"

Ana's heart jolted at the unexpected tone of uncertainty and underlying despair in his voice, and she looked back up. Right from the beginning she had been impressed by the calm, sure way in which Michael behaved, and the sudden hopeless she sensed in him shook her. "Yes," she whispered, past the rising lump in her throat. "You're alive, and that's all that matters now… right?"

Her heart felt as if it would beat its way right out of her chest. She couldn't suppress it anymore—_Luis is dead, Luis is dead, Luis is dead…_ only he wasn't dead. What the hell had happened to him, to Vivian, to everyone? What had they all become? Was Luis still out there, somewhere—she couldn't bear to think it, but was unable to stop herself. Her last sight of him, her dead and bloodied husband viciously attacking one of their neighbors, receding away in her rearview mirror, was still seared across her memory. _Luis is dead…_

He'd attacked _her_. When just a few short hours before he'd kissed her so passionately, and traced his fingers so lightly across her stomach as they fell asleep together…

It hadn't been easy to make their marriage work. They'd only been together a year. His regular nine-to-five job coupled with her long hours at the hospital left them with little time to spend together, but they'd always made the most of it, and they'd loved each other… His loss had left a hole in Ana's heart that she didn't think would ever disappear, no matter how long she lived, be it ten days or ten years.

Her eyes were burning, they were on fire, and she felt as if she were drowning. Ana fiercely wiped away the tears and sucked in a ragged breath. She couldn't let herself cry. She couldn't let herself think—it would only paralyze her. The past was gone, lost to her forever… there was only the now, in this strange new world she had been catapulted into.

In the darkness, Michael shifted again. "I have to believe that the future matters," he said at last, and his voice was steady again with renewed conviction. "That there _is_ a future. Otherwise, why bother fighting to survive?"

From the direction of the king-sized bed came the sound of a muffled cough, and it was clear that Andre, at least, was listening. Ana wasn't surprised. She didn't think any of them were going to find sleep easy in coming.

She sniffled again, still fighting the pain and turmoil. "But if there's nothing worth surviving for…"

_Luis is dead… he isn't dead…_

There was a rustling sound and Ana just caught the glint of Michael's eyes as he sat up and turned to face her. "Don't say that," he said in a low voice. "You don't believe that, do you? Isn't your humanity alone worth fighting for? Because those… things out there, they're not—human."

He was silent a moment, and Ana saw again in her mind Luis turning, bloodlust in his eyes, and leaping at her with horrifying speed. She blinked it away with an effort as Michael continued. "But you're here for a reason—we all are. Even CJ and the others. To help each other survive. That's what matters now."

_He's dead… he's dead… and I don't want to die like that…_

No more doubting, no more weakness. She would only be a detriment to the group if she let herself dwell on her grief and shock and fear. For the time being, for now, this was her home. These people were her family. And she would fight to protect them. It would give her a purpose, something to do, a way to remain human amongst the madness.

"Thank you," Ana whispered, and it was all she could say.


	2. The Skin Beneath

  
  
**Scenes From A Mall: The Skin Beneath**  
By Allison E. Lane   
  
  
  
The measured, deliberately casual pace of the footsteps echoing across the main gallery of the mall could signify the approach of only one person.  
  
"Hey there, big boy," Monica said cheerfully in greeting as she came into view from behind Hallowed Grounds, flashing a playful smile. "How come you're not up top?"  
  
Michael looked up from the book on guns he was reading and smiled in return. Most of the others had gone to the roof for their daily dose of sunshine and undead skeet shooting (courtesy of Andy from across the parking lot), but he had elected to stay indoors. Monica obviously intended to join the rooftop party, however, and was dressed to kill—a skimpy bikini that left nothing to the imagination, with a matching sheer waist wrap and a pair of sunglasses pushed up into her blonde curls. A folding lawn chair was tucked under her arm.  
  
"Doctor's orders," he replied, nodding in the direction of Metropolis. Ana could be seen inside, taking inventory of the medical supplies the group had stockpiled. "I hurt my back a few days ago and she wants me to take it easy for a while. No roughhousing or playing volleyball."  
  
Monica pouted, looking at him with sad puppy eyes. "Aww, and make you miss out on all the fun? That's not very nice of her." She put the lawn chair down against the coffee stand's counter and sauntered over to where Michael was perched on a stool. "I could give you a massage," she said, circling him speculatively. "Work all that pain out. I'm very good at it."  
  
Hands on her hips, she arched one slender eyebrow in invitation, and Michael had to wonder whether it was only physical pain she was referring to. Closing his book and setting it aside, he opened his mouth to reply, but Monica was already beating him to the punch. "Come on, big boy," she said in a low voice, leaning across the stool in front of her to tap a teasing finger under his chin and draw him forward, displaying an unobstructed view of her ample cleavage. "I think you could use the break… don't you?"  
  
Michael just stared at her for a minute, burningly aware of their proximity to each other, the unspoken promise in her eyes, and the glaringly obvious fact that she was just barely clothed. He hated to admit it to himself, but there was a part of him, buried deep in the depths of his rusted heart, that was tempted by what she was offering. He wouldn't be human if he wasn't, just a tiny bit. And he wouldn't blame anyone who gave in. Wasn't this what people did, when the world was ending?  
  
But…  
  
As neutrally as possible, he reached up to gently push Monica's hand away, and said the first thing that came to mind: "Why do you do this?"  
  
Monica's brow furrowed in confusion, and the slyly seductive expression she wore slipped for just an instant. "Do what?"  
  
Backed into a corner, Michael's eyes darted around, landing everywhere but on her, hunting for a delicate way of putting his thoughts into words and coming up empty-handed. "Do… this," he attempted lamely. "Try to seduce every guy in sight."  
  
The words were out of his mouth before he had time to consider how hurtful they might be, and it was Monica's turn to stare at him, dumbfounded. Michael was shocked to see something very much like hurt welling in her eyes, the fallen ingenue façade abruptly vanished and gone. All too quickly, the fleeting impression of loss had hardened into indignant anger. "What's it matter to you?" she snapped, turning on her heel to stalk away.  
  
"Monica—" Michael impulsively grabbed her arm, and she glared at him with a world of old, ugly bitterness radiating from her like a tidal wave. He thought of how they had all been so quick to dismiss her as an empty-headed sexpot, never stopping to think of her as anything else, and he was ashamed. There were so very few of them in this little microcosm of society, and already they were pushing past their initial bonding through disaster back to the old human pastime of stereotyping. Monica deserved better than that—they all did. "It's okay," he said quietly. "You can talk to me."  
  
"What's to talk about?" Monica snorted, yanking her arm away. "I'm a slut. That's what you think, isn't it?"  
  
Michael did his best to swallow down his initial impression of her for good. "No," he said carefully. "I'm just wondering why you seem to feel the need to make the, um, rounds… as it were. I mean, we all saw you and Steve on the televisions…"  
  
Monica almost seemed to crumple then, her spirit folding in upon itself—no longer vivacious and seductive, she instead looked lost and forlorn. She looked down at her feet and mumbled something unintelligible.  
  
"I'm sorry?" Michael asked, looking at her inquisitively.  
  
She jerked her head up, red-rimmed eyes flashing with tears. "I was an early bloomer, okay? I've always had big tits. It's the only thing the guys ever see in me, it's the only thing they ever want from me. So I give them what they want." She choked on the words, fiercely wiped at her eyes, and glared at him again, defiantly. "You know I only got into that church because the jackasses guarding the door said I was too pretty to be one of _them? They_ were everywhere, and they weren't letting anyone else in, and I had to promise to make it _worth their while_ if they let me in. So you're right. I'm a slut. But I don't know how to be anything else."  
  
In that moment, Michael saw Monica for who she was: an angry young woman resigned to a stereotype she'd neither wanted nor asked for. Someone determined to survive at any cost, even if that meant shedding her dignity time and again and being perceived as someone she really wasn't, deep down inside.  
  
He reached behind the counter of the coffee stand for a napkin and held it out to her—he hated to see any woman cry, especially when it was his fault. He felt he'd done too much of that in his life. After a moment's hesitation, Monica took it. "You _can_ be something else," he said simply into the pregnant silence, and he meant it. "You're a survivor. That counts for something, too."  
  
Monica smiled briefly, wanly, touching at her eyes with the napkin before crumpling it into a ball in her fist. Then she drew in a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "So," she said, and it was clear that their deep conversation was over. "How about that massage? Think you can handle it?"  
  
Michael let out a snort of laughter—one had to admire her remarkable ability to bounce back from whatever situation life threw at her. "Have fun up top, Monica. And be careful."  
  
She rolled her eyes in mock disappointment at him; it was as if their conversation had never taken place, and Michael implicitly understood that it was to stay that way. "Sure, whatever. You don't know what you're missing." She winked at him, once again the playfully sexy bombshell; it was possible that the casual observer wouldn't even notice the red still rimming her eyes. "Catch ya later, big boy."  
  
Tossing her hair, Monica picked up her lawn chair and flipped a coy little wave. Michael watched her, contemplatively, as she headed for the employees-only door that led to the staircase up to the roof, swaying her hips for show as she went. Putting on a show for no one and everyone.  
  
"Let me guess," a voice said next to his ear as Monica disappeared from view, and he jumped. It was Ana, evidently finished with her inventory. "She offered to give you a blow job and you turned her down."  
  
Michael chuckled wryly again, smiling in mild disapproval as Ana hitched herself up on the stool next to him. "We all have our roles to play," he murmured to no one in particular, still lost in thought.  
  
Ana looked at him strangely. "What?"  
  
He shook his head in dismissal, and smiled at her again. "Never mind."   
  



End file.
